MORE THAN JUST A NUMBER

  By definition a Hero is a person who is admired for their courage, their achievements or for other noble qualities. Noble qualities would be high moral principles and greatness of character. My list of heroes has been amended and updated as I have moved through the seasons of my life and by now it is top heavy with accomplished writers, scholars and scientists. When I need a shot of clear-eyed skepticism and unforgiving truth I turn to Samuel Clemens (1835 - 1910). His quotes range from moral benchmarks to keen observations on the human experience. He was unapologetic, a skeptic of the 1st Order and I thrive in his shadow. He is a hero by means of both his literary achievements and of noble character.
I keep discovering or rediscovering Mark Twain quotes that are both profound and empowering. Today I came across these two. The one on ‘Majority’ is not new to me, just put away where I could not find it. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” I take that to mean, it may not require a change of position but he makes clear his suspicions about herd mentality. Certainly he would have us rethink where it is that we stand and how we got there. The glimpse of wisdom on aging is new to me. “Do not complain about growing old, it is a privilege denied to many.” 
George Burns is credited with; “Age, it’s just a number.” As I understand it, Burns didn’t actually say that but he got the credit. What he said was; “You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old”. Along the way someone took liberty with his insight and turned it into a clever punch-line. Burns made a distinction between inevitable physical decline and exercising a keen, informed presence at any age. I used to throw the (just a number) thing out in conversation but that was when I was a young 75. A decade later I concede that 85 is more than just a number, it’s a privilege that many have been denied. To deny that one’s sphere is shrinking may stroke a proud ego but it doesn’t hit the pause button. At 85 living in the moment is a sound investment. The axiom has never been more relevant: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” Today, in the moment, it’s the only day I will ever be able to my hands on. The "Present" requires gratitude and respect; I try to spend it on something noble, something that would please my mother.
Samuel Clemens is not alone at the top of my list. Carl Sagan and Sylvia Earle are right up there, champions of making science relevant to the layperson without dumbing it down. Helen Keller and Kurt Vonnegut reveal human nature with both its grand possibility and dark side as well. I lean on all of them when I feel the need.
Thanksgiving will be here in a few days. It is a time for both humility and gratitude. I have given up on the God that sanctions wars and racism and greedy bastards who abuse the planet, who take and put nothing back, profiting from human suffering. So my humble ’Thank-you’ will go out into the universe unaddressed. Before 1492 the true native tribes of North America believed, if you want to know what the creator expects of us then pay attention to how creation works. Take some, leave some, we’re all in this together. Thank you! Thank you for the plants and animals that replicate and regenerate their own kind so there is enough for us to eat and drink and sustain. If caution is the better part of valor (and I believe it is) then I would also think that humility is the better part of gratitude. “Mitakuye Oyasin, We are all related!”

TRACKING THE SUN'S ARC

  As a holiday gift to myself I write a Season’s Greeting, print it on appropriate stationery and send copies to my special people. Not that some people are special and others are not but certainly some are more special than others. When or where I read it I can’t say but reliable research indicates that we (humans) can maintain a limited number of personal relationships, about 100, give or take. It seems maintaining a personal relationship requires a time/energy investment and we can only spread ourselves so thin. My gift to me makes me take time to reflect on my more special people, even if it lasts only long enough to write a short remark, sign my name and stuff the envelope.
This is a good place to discriminate between my special people and others who share my place in time, who do meet the relationship requirement but don’t measure up otherwise. After all, not all relationships bear fruit. I have beaucoup special people and we don’t have to curry the other’s favor. Our backstory includes chapters and verse that circumvent the need for maintenance.
I’ve been working on my Season’s Greetings for 2024. The writing and printing are finished, all the envelopes are stamped and addressed. Later today I will begin the time consuming part, taking my time to remember what makes that person so special, then be thinking of them, make a comment and sign my name. That is the gift. In that moment I realize how wonderful this life has been and what a dreadful place this would have been if not for them and our special connection.
In the past 30 years especially, I have embraced the fall season with all of its holidays as my Holiday Season and I try in my own way to celebrate them all. For as long as humankind has been tracking the sun’s arc and the corresponding seasons, autumn has been a time of anticipation as well as a time of plenty. So they celebrated the bounty of summer and prepared for the long-dark-cold. Thanksgiving fills that breach now. Christians would have it be a religious observance but gratitude and dependance on natures whims don’t need a god to appreciate our place in the natural order. 
The oldest, longest observed holiday across human history is celebrated just a few weeks later. Winter Solstice might slip by unnoticed with all the hype on Christmas. The sun’s arc had been sinking lower in the south since early summer and the winter-cold was in close pursuit. Prehistoric cultures watched closely. The time of harvest plenty was long past and they needed evidence if not a harbinger of better things to come. When the sun’s arc stops sinking and begins to climb again it signals the return to longer, warmer days and shorter nights. It was a time to take courage and endure but better times were on the way. Solstice falls around December 20 or 21 since before we had a calendar. Its close proximity to Christmas is no coincidence. In the churches zeal to convert pagans they positioned the birth of Christ to coincide with Solstice. Reframing the holiday under false pretense to draw pagans into the church was devious but it worked. The biblical account had Jesus born when sheep were in the field, when Romans paId taxes in the cities of their birth. That would be in the spring. The Papacy knew that but was much more concerned with converting pagans than historical accuracy. I still celebrate Christmas but not the ‘Prince of peace’ story. I like the music, the tradition of exchanging gifts and in its own way the warm feelings that announce the onset of bitter cold. 
With my family scattered I will break bread with a few friends on Thanksgiving day but it’s a long, four day weekend and I am trying to hatch a plan for a roadtrip. My thinking now is to spend the Friday, Saturday & Sunday in NW Arkansas, exploring those tourist towns without the tourists. I’ll take my camera and see what unfolds. If that doesn’t pan out, I’m still thinking, still going over the maps. 

IN REAL TIME

I just finished watching a six part Netflix series that chronicled the life and times of Alexander The Great (356 BCE - 323 BCE). Long story-short; from the Greek kingdom of Macedonia Alexander was thrust into a precarious position. He could seize the throne and go far away to prove himself in battle or try to hold down the home front and be murdered like his father before him. Alex was already a fierce warrior at 20 years, lacking experience but not the insight and cunning that would prove his metal. Always outnumbered, he led his army against the Persians, conquering what is now Turkey, then Egypt where they made him a god and he built a city worthy of his name, Alexandrea, at the mouth of the Nile. The Persian King, Darius III thought him of little consequence until the upstart from Macedon sent the Persian armies in full retreat several times and was approaching Babylon. Darius then led his full army in person to regain his pride and reputation. Seriously, these were real people, not made up characters in a Tom Clancy novel.

If Alexander led an army of 60,000 then Darius had an army of 150,000. But Alex wanted to defeat Darius in battle to secure his own place in history. Always a step ahead of the Persians, Alexander was a natural tactician. He maneuvered the puzzle pieces, dictated the time and place of every battle and used every advantage to rout the Persians. Darius fled with a small contingent and was killed by his own generals for his cowardice. Alexander came through Babylon’s front gate and took over as the new king of Persia (Iraq). In the next few years he took his army as far east as India, laying waste to whoever didn’t surrender.

The thought that a such a young man could lead his army so far, live off the land for so long and prevail is hard to fathom. Ironically, Alexander The Great died mysteriously in Babylon at the age of 32. He had run out of places to conquer. His concerns about surviving in his homeland, Macedonia seem moot as he never returned. I cannot get my head around that time factor, so many fighters on the move, relentless, up close, swords and spears. It took half a year to reposition troops for the next battle.

In the 2nd Iraq war in 2003, it took about 12 hours for 45 stealth fighters and bombers stationed in Missouri to fly the 7,000 miles and render Saddam Hussein’s radar and control centers useless. Saddam Hussein had boasted waging the mother of all wars as Darrius had done sone 2300 years before, both on the same landscape. Coalition troops found Hussein hiding in a spider hole and his demise was as pitiful as Darrius’ had been so long ago.

        Everything happens faster now. It took Alexander a decade to change the world. Babylon was a great city in what is now central Iraq but all that is left there is desert and ruins and anthropologists, digging and sorting artifacts. But Alexandria is still a great city, his city, where the Nile River spills into the Mediterranean Sea. I have trouble trying to imagine what he was like in person. I doubt I would want him for a friend as he was certainly preoccupied with an army to lead or lands yet to conquer. In Egypt he was a god after all and I don’t really put much stock in gods. I doubt, after the first victories in that first year that he wanted for anything. I’m just an old survivor who doesn’t want for anything that I truly need and and I don’t know how to improve on that. I enjoy an electric toothbrush and toothpaste made special for sensitive teeth and I doubt Alexander ever ate a BLT. Still, I can have a BLT whenever I feel like it. I don’t need to be feared or lead an army. Alexander The Great lived out a great story but I wouldn’t want that for myself, just like I didn’t want to wage war in Baghdad against Saddam Hussein. Watching that stuff on Netflix or YouTube is both enlightening and interesting enough to satisfy my curiosity. Some things are better experienced vicariously but in real time, I would rather go fishing. 

BOOTS & A PITCHFORK

  Too old to be a preteen and not quite a full fledged teenager it was my job to clean out the stalls in the barn. I had rubber boots, a pitchfork, gloves and a wheelbarrow but sh*t is still sh*t and I couldn’t clean the barn without wading through it. Our milk cow grazed the pasture but took her grain at the feed box in her stall. Cows are Ruminants, cud chewing mammals with a four chambered stomach and it takes lots of grain & grass to meet their nutritional requirement. So they sh*t a lot, everywhere, all the time. My dad milked twice a day and both the milk bucket and his feet were in close proximity to fresh cow poop. In the barn it didn’t dry up as quickly as outside so my job was to minimize the sloppy, smelly stuff in the back half of the stall. We kept straw down so the manure would stay together on the pitchfork. It was a twice a week chore and it didn’t take long to perfect a technique that let cow crap stick to my boots and the tines of the pitchfork but not on me. I rolled the wheelbarrow load outside, spread cow sh*t around and if I got back to the house without any crap on me it was like dodging the bullet. 
The 2024 Presidential election has spent itself and the writing is on the wall. I am not particularly upset with the winner himself but I can’t say the same for his admirers. I understand why the 1% want to protect their investments and how evangelical Christians (Pentecostal) and other like minded believers have clung to a religion that has been transformed into a political action group. The rest of the MAGA crowd can be separated into several profiles but to some degree they all have personalities that gravitate to self obsessed, charismatic leaders and populist bigots. Both would have us believe their quest is to realize a righteous purpose but in the end it’s a power grab with no sense of conscience or consequence.  The whole MAGA empire reminds me of an old story when dairies sold milk directly to customers. The milkman with his dairy truck delivered door to door several times a week. A man’s wife was cheating on him with the milkman and everybody except the man knew it. When friends and neighbors tried to convince the cuckoled husband of his wife’s infidelity he went straight into denial saying “No, no, and anyway, I love all the free ice cream.” 
I’ve spoken here before to what I see as extreme conservatives who are wandering in search of something even more extreme. If you go to the urban dictionary the noun, “Trumpfuckery” is defined as; “Anything involving racist, misogynistic, hateful speech and actions masquerading as patriotism.” I think the expression is spot on, not to fault Trump. How he got to be what he is was not his decision, rather a complicated process of some bad DNA, inherited fortune, timing, predatory role models and opportunity to exploit others; how could he have turned out any other way? On the other hand it is disappointing that the majority of voting Americans are smitten with a self-righteous, self-obsessed, authoritarian and the path they would have us go.
Amazing the way these two stories resemble each other. We survived four years with a narcissist demagogue at the helm. Then a four year break and here we go again. I get the feeling as long as his cuckoled followers are feasting on the free ice cream I’ll have to keep my boots and pitchfork on standby. 

CHLE RELLENOS OR CARNITAS

I voted early last week, got there an hour before they opened and still stood in line for two and a half hours. When I finished the line was twice as long as when I began which meant lots of folks were looking at a four or five hour wait. Today I’m getting text messages every ten minutes to vote for someone or something but I am out of ammunition. I get one vote and it has been spent. 

I have the same dismal expectation as in 2020. At the time I didn’t see how the good guys could win but they did. My friend’s optimism proved more reliable than my skepticism. It’s hard to feel confident about anything in this climate but my coffee group is more optimistic and I take some hope in that. Changing the subject: I haven’t done anything in the wood shop for nearly a year. If discretion really is the better part of valor then maybe I’m better as well. As I accumulate more years I loose something in the process, like coordination, keen sight not to mention physical strength. I still have all of my fingers and thumbs and I really like them but all it would take to change hat would be a little slip or miscue. So I’m not making serious sawdust in my basement nowadays. But I belong to the Kansas City Woodworkers Guild and we have a a modern, professional wood shop that I can use nearly every day. It’s about a forty minute drive but I don’t have to sharpen or adjust any tools, just be safe, get some oversight if I need some expert assistance and clean up when I’m finished. I got motivated the other night when I couldn’t fall back asleep after a middle of the night wakeup; I want to get back into the sawdust game. 

Back before Covid I made a tabletop from Spalted Maple, 24”x52” and an inch and a half thick. But I never got around to making the frame and legs. After the pandemic subsided I acquired several awesome Cherry boards; 7’ long, 2 1/2” thick and 8” to 12” wide. After a long spell in the dark basement I now have plans for them. With just a hint of twist and warp, they will straighten out flat after just a few passes through the joiner and planer. I drove 40 minutes in the rain today, got some good help from the foreman for the day and did the blocking out on a set of four tapered legs for my table. From the radial arm saw to the ban saw to the joiner and finish on the planer; tomorrow or the day after I’ll go back and pick up where I left off, learning how to ‘Taper’ the legs. I understand the process but need to get the sequence and angles exactly as they should be. 

‘Frieze’ is the proper name for the skirt or apron that connects the legs and supports the table top. It will be more sawing with the same tools, just thinner boards. The trick is to connect them at all four corners and attach the legs so there is no wobble but I’ll get help on that. I haven’t felt this good about sawdust in a long time. If nothing else it keeps my mind from tanking over election crap. Tomorrow is election day, no more campaign rhetoric just Trump making noise, “They cheated” if he loses or “I can’t wait to punish my enemies.” if he wins. He actually believes his own fiction. I’ll leave the radio turned off and listen to music on my smart phone.  Making sawdust today was better than I expected. I knew I would come back around to it but the basement has become a dangerous place and the drive downtown is a (PITA). It’s like the more often you make a drive the it gets easier. Besides, the Guild moved from its old location to a better building with more/better parking which are nice but the kicker is; it is just a couple of blocks from the best Mexican restaurant in Kansas City. So if I go early and break for lunch it’s either Chile Rellenos or Carnitas.  

SELFRIGHTEOUS

  If traffic is light and I make all of the stoplights it takes about twenty minutes to get to my coffee group. That time of day I can usually listen to the local NPR station without suffering election rhetoric. This morning the announcer reported on a speech President Biden made yesterday in Arizona. Central to the speech was a profound apology, both personal and official as President for the longstanding shameful practice of removing Native American children from their homes and families to be forcibly assimilated into a white, christian culture. I know the story very well, children were punished harshly for speaking their native language or letting their hair grow long. In recent years that attempt at cultural genocide came full circle with the discovery of unrecorded, unmarked graves at nearly every government Indian school. What’s worse, the government continued to fund those self-righteous entrepreneurs with their gentler but none the less sanctified scheme of ethnic cleansing up into the 1960’s. 
On the radio it was noted that the timing was significant. Arizona is an important swing state with a high percentage of Native Americans. They figured significantly, supporting Biden in 2020. I would not find fault in that detail. If someone does the long overdo right thing with an alternative motive it is still the right thing. The reporter noted that the President’s message was enthusiastically received. I just hope their enthusiasm will be demonstrated at the ballot box again in two weeks. 
Recently in this blog I shared a new-to-me Mark Twain quote, his definition of ‘Conservatism’. It is both clever, timely and can be found in my last post. But that wasn’t his only observation on the subject. I did a little deeper search and found this: “The radical invents the views, but when he has worn them out, the Conservative adopts them.”  Twain’s humor and sarcasm are subtle here but I thrive on it. The word ‘View’ in this context means; ‘a subjective opinion’ and suggests a relatively limited or a narrow idea. I cannot speak for all Progressive thinkers but I gravitate to a bigger picture or ‘World View’, which my critics find disturbing but then they prefer issues that exist in a vacuum. World View refers to a framework of ideas and beliefs that describe and interpret the world’s social reality.
With the campaign winding down I’m glad it will be over soon. I am prepared for either alternative. It is my View the former President should have won in 2020 but he blundered with the Covid pandemic to become his own worst enemy. The Donald Trump story fell in my lap in the early 1990’s while I was on a field trip to Atlantic City, NJ, researching environmental issues and I ran across local articles concerning Trump’s misadventures. I continued digging in that fertile ground until his pattern of ruthless greed had been established. By then he had evolved into a self-obsessed, misogynist, racist business man whose every effort was single purposed on accumulating wealth and power.
When Donald T. became a full fledged narcissist is unclear but his father was a narcissist before him. You can’t have two narcissists under the same roof so Donald was sent off to military school. The over-riding moral truth in that relationship was that cheating is alright but getting caught is not, a distinction that has marked the rest of his life. By the 90’s his guru was Roy Cohn, a New York attorney who helped convict Julius & Ethyl Rosenberg of espionage in the 50’s and consulted for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Communist witch hunt that soon collapsed under its own weight. Cohn & Trump were a perfect match. Cohn, the aging attorney was a Jewish, closet gay who could not come out and was pissed at the world. Trump was a hard-charging young blood who demonstrated the self obsessed self-worship that Cohn had never been able to harness. The bottom line was, still is; If you cheat enough you will get caught so beat the system at its own game. Hire and reward enough highly skilled, greedy, unscrupled lawyers who can win when they have the means. If not then tie case up with legal paperwork, appeals to postpone, file for continuation, change of venue or manipulate a miss trial. In the end the pursuant either runs out of time or money and drops charges. Cohn was the source of "Never admit anything, if you get caught in a lie, deny-deny-deny" As with legal manipulation, the lie becomes the story even when you know it's a lie. 
My View again: since I learned who he was and how he operated I cannot find a single initiative on his part that did not put his own selfish best interests above any other consideration. Being President did not change that. He is firmly convinced that whatever serves his ego is best for the nation. When his deals are associated with failure, contracts will have been framed in advance to shift responsibility for failure to subcontractors and middle men rather than draw costly penalties and tarnish The Trump name.  
MAGA has nothing to do with American Greatness. In all this time his personality and sense of purpose have not changed from the truculent teenager who was banned from the home to the ultra rich narcissist who is perched again, ready to become President. MAGA is all about what he wants for himself; power and money which are interchangeable. He needs political backing and an easily manipulated base. He can buy that or toss out crumbs to evangelical wannabes and malcontents who suck it up like swill. More than respect, he wants his enemies to fear him. 
I have little or no (Power=Money) and my little vote doesn't amount to p*ss in the wind. My dad was a union man who paid his bills and trusted my mother to maintain balance in our home. I cannot get my head around the idea that the more enemies you have that fear you then the more successful you are. This life has taught me that following the Golden Rule is preferred to destroying your enemies. I learned to fix as best I can whatever it is that I break and move on. What goes around has a way of coming back around and disenchanted malcontents shooting at me from rooftops is not my idea of good Karma. 
I normally don’t dump on politicians or others I disagree with. It doesn’t serve a purpose and I doubt seriously that I move the needle on anyone’s conscience. I don’t know what I’ll do if the old demagogue (look it up if you don’t know) if he wins. He has become even more pathetic than the bumbling old man he accused Joe Biden of being. He looses his way in the middle of speeches and the lies he tells are the same ones he told back in 2020. 
I am glad I don’t have to write this disclaimer again. It has no value other than it made me collect my thoughts and get them down in text. If I get accused of being a bleeding-heart Liberal then so be it. When I can no longer defend myself then this effort may shed some light on me and mine. I am not running for office but I approve of this. 

EASIER TO FOOL PEOPLE

  Mark Twain has been a hero of mine for a long time and for many reasons. His clear-eyed skepticism and mastery with language left a legacy that is as timely and relevant now as when he penned Huckleberry Finn. I dwell on his quotes as seriously as devout Christians do their favorite scriptures. He said, “Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.” He also said, "Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”  With regard to religion he left no doubt; "I am quite sure now that in matters concerning religion, a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” Today’s conspiracy and misinformation culture was foreseen by Twain when he observed: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” It has always been easy to point out flaws in human nature but all we see when looking at ourselves in a mirror is the lipstick on the pig. I tend to identify with others in Twain’s camp as he didn't exclude himself when it came to mocking human folly. 
After 40,000 years (a significant number if you know our backstory), the weight and measure of our checkered past can be as much an inditement as an accolade. Historically, small groups (hunter-gatherers) were egalitarian. They lived together peacefully (more or less) and sustained a stable culture for at least 30,000 years. Every person contributed to the greater good. Cooperation and resolution of conflicts were far more productive than competition and violence. The loss of a peer, even to an injury could threaten the clan’s survival. 
Civilization started evolving in many different places and at different times but experts agree it began with the Agricultural Revolution some 12,000 years ago and it was about 6,000 years later before they started building cities. I have a friend, a lady in her 70’s, educated, intelligent and very confident in her own opinions. At coffee maybe a year ago she was treating the words ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ as synonyms, as if they were interchangeable. The two have commonalities but they are not synonymous. Gently, I tried to share that with her but she was upset to begin with and gave me a dose of ‘What-for’. But culture is about behavior and beliefs, how people interact and frame their expectations. Civilization requires infrastructure. A civilization requires large numbers of people living in densely populated areas (cities), it must be able to feed all of those people, it requires specialized division of labor (work) which in turn forms a class system hierarchy, it requires leaders, some form of government, religion, a means of self defense and/or waging war. There are other criteria but you get the drift. There can be many cultures present in one civilization but not vise versa. My friend reminded me of the expression: “I know what I know so don’t confuse me with facts.” So I moved to another table.
I am reminded at this point that we are all civilized and we all fit into a culture, even a subculture; not a choice. What goes unobserved is that Civilization (as we know it) is driven by large numbers of people and serves its own organizational and technological needs with little or no accommodation for individuals. Whoever prospers in that culture wants to maintain status quo. They may give lip service to social reform but not if it call for them to sacrifice anything they value. 
What would you call a well aged, almost but not quite humanist with an ever so thin shred of misanthrope, a recovering Christian with spiritual leanings toward nature based (pagan) traditions? That would be me. I am comfortable with that identity and I fit there in a relatively small niche. I know what I know and like to believe but sometimes I miss the mark. When I must deal with my own, erroneous conclusions I certainly hope someone gently helps me balance the equation. 
When I began this writing I thought it would be about culture and herd mentality. Herd animals benefit from safety in numbers. Predators may pick off individuals that wander but inside the herd is a pretty safe place to be. For people who herd together the risk is falling out of favor with peers if you step outside the rule. We are social animals, we need each other and in order to enjoy that ‘Herd’ security we can’t wander too far from the herd’s agenda. So if your subculture tends to be racist or ultra political, one side or the other there won’t be much tolerance for an individual who deviates from those prejudices. Social rejection is hard to bear and it’s easy to fall back on the herd mentality rather than be rejected or worse. Here and now in our greater herd, I fear the herd at large is smitten with Twain's, blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals. 
It’s a delicate balance and often, more often than I like to admit; I surrender that independence for the sake of belonging to the herd, even if my herd is few and scattered. I’m sure Mark Twain would have something to say about people who take pride in their herd mentality.